Innovative assessment paradigm to enhance student learning in engineering education

ABSTRACT

Incorporation of student self-assessment (SSA) in engineering education offers opportunities to support and encourage learner-led-learning. This paper presents an innovative assessment paradigm that integrates formative, summative, and SSA to enhance student learning. The assessment innovation was implemented in a senior-level civil engineering design course. Direct evidence of the impact of employing this innovation on student learning and achievement was derived by monitoring student academic performance in direct assessment tasks throughout the semester. Students’ feedback demonstrated the effectiveness of this innovation to improve their understanding of course topics build their autonomy, independent judgement, and self-regulated learning skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Learner-led-learning
• assessment
• self-assessment
• formative
• summative

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the generosity of students for their volunteer participation in the surveys. The author would like to thank the teaching assistant, Eng. M. Sohayeb, for his help in marking the HW assignments. This initiative was conducted in compliance with existing institutional ethical guidelines.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Tamer El-Maaddawy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). He earned his PhD from University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He was the Director/Coordinator of the Civil Engineering Master Program at UAEU from 2011 to 2015. He is currently the Chair of the ‘College of Engineering Learning Outcomes Assessment Committee’ and a member of the ‘University Learning Outcomes Assessment Committee’. He is also a ‘Faculty Fellow’ in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) at UAEU. In his current work, Dr. El-Maaddawy focuses on enhancing learning through innovative assessment.

Additional information

Funding

The author acknowledges the financial support provided by his institution (United Arab Emirates University) [grant number 31N271].